People always tell me I’m lucky to live here. Luck is when something you can’t control works out in your favor, so I am lucky, but also I took action to be here, and I learned action is infinitely more important than luck. Action generates luck.
First of all, let me give some history. I lived in Hawaii and planned on staying. I wanted to stay and work for a year at a new job before I went back to visit my parents, but I hadn’t been home in 3 years and they urged me to go so I went.
While in Maryland, the job I had lined up in Hawaii fell through. Looking back, not going back to Hawaii was a prime example of inaction. I ended up working in DC a year and I moved with my job to Virginia.
And I got into credit card debt.
After I quit drinking and doing drugs and decided I needed to get out of debt and move back to the tropics (The Marktic Circle). It took a long time to pay off my maxxed out credit cards.
All the while I was planning on moving, and planning and planning, and looking and looking. I thought that Belize, english speaking, 400 years of unbroken peace, looked pretty good. So I was looking and looking. Library and internet. Looking and thinking about it with no action.
Then one day I got a call from an acquaintance who I usually saw only one weekend a year. He was going on vacation. He usually went with his son, but his son couldn’t go that year so he called me because I was a scuba diver. I wanted to think about it for a while, (which would have been more inaction) but in this case that wasn’t an option and I ended up saying yes. Then I came here and met a girl.
When I was leaving to go back home after my vacation, I had a strong sensation I was supposed to stay.
I kept in touch with the girl, I thought she might be “The One” (she wasn’t). But she sent me the ad for the job I have today. I applied and came back down and interviewed.
When I got the job, I was still scared. But I called the newspaper, ran an ad for a yard sale. I called the airlines and bought a ticket. And I made calls to sell my van and rent my house. I turned in my resignation at work and that was it. I was surprised at how easy these little actions were.
From the time I decided to move and took the first action, to the time I was living here, was two months. There was very little planning and thinking involved. Before that, I was planning and thinking for years and years. With zero results.
Sure I was lucky, I got hired, I met the girl, but all the luck is the result of my actions. I could have sat in Virginia and thought about and planned it forever, and nothing would have ever happened. After I took action things happened, and my luck started.
So now I’m here, and grateful every day for it. I get a little irked when people tell me I’m lucky, but I know I am.